1. Inventive Field
The inventive field relates generally to the automated stitching of fabric and the attachment of rings thereto. In particular, the inventive field relates to the automated stitching and attachment of rings to window coverings such as Roman shades.
2. Background
The attachment of rings to fabrics presently is labor intensive. While automated machinery, such as sewing machines, fabric location and positioning devices and the like have greatly automated the manufacture of fabric based products, such as window coverings, the attachment of rings to such fabrics, e.g., to cooperate with pull cords for operating the coverings, has remained a manual operation. More specifically, when attaching rings to fabrics, such as occurs when manufacturing Roman and similar style window coverings (or “shades”), manufacturers commonly today rely upon manual labor to position the rings and the shade material and then attach the rings to the material using a commercial sewing machine. That is, there are no readily available apparatus or methods for automatically positioning the fabric (relative to a ring adapted sewing machine) and repeatedly attaching rings thereto. Thus, a need exists for an apparatus and method for the automated attachment of rings to fabric as well as pre-stitching the fabric and, more specifically, the automated manufacture of Roman shades and other window coverings.